VW eyes phase-out of combustion engines, but says it will sell conventional cars into 2040s

Clean Energy Wire

VW has said it will sell combustion engines until the early 2040s, toning down media reports that it will phase out the technology around 2040. “We will sell combustion-engine cars until the early 2040s,” VW spokesperson Christoph Adomat told Clean Energy Wire. “But we stand by the Paris Climate Agreement, which implies that VW’s fleet will have to travel CO2-neutral by 2050,” Adomat added. The company’s chief strategist Michael Jost had signalled at a conference earlier this week that VW eyes a phase-out of conventional car production. Jost said VW will start to roll out its next-generation gasoline and diesel cars beginning in 2026, according to a report by Christoph Rauwald and Oliver Sachgau for Bloomberg. Jost said the company was working “on the last platform for vehicles that aren’t CO2-neutral […] We’re gradually fading out combustion engines to the absolute minimum.” On the basis of Jost’s comments, German business daily Handelsblatt had written that VW “announced the end of the combustion engine” and that it would “sell the last car with a combustion engine around the year 2040.”